[Gutsy] sony-acpi not loaded on sony vaio

[Paolo Borelli]

Binary package hint: linux-source-2.6.22

I just did a fresh install of gutsy tribe 4 (the alternate cd, installing with LVM if it matters) on my sony vaio notebook model VGN FS215M, everything works pretty good, but the sony-acpi module is not loaded by default, so I cannot change the screen brightness.

If I modprobe the module manually, things work fine. Would be nice if the module was properly loaded by default.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu
better. Could you please provide the full output of 'sudo dmidecode'
as an attachment to your bug report? Thanks in advance.

 status incomplete
 assignee <email address hidden>

[Benjamin Rubin (bnrubin)]

dmidecode added. changing status.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

I can confirm this for Tribe 5. But afaik the same happens with Edgy Testing Live CD but works on Edgy installation. Maybe it is only a Live CD issue.

[Alex Muntada (alex.muntada)]

Confirmed on both tribe 5 (live CD) and today's Gutsy updates.

BTW, dmidecode provides a lot of sensible information from the computer, as serial numbers, etc. Paolo's attachment should probably be removed or filtered to get rid of sensible data.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

This issue has been fixed but in another way. Sony_acpi is deprecated because of sony-laptop module which replaces sonypi. The acpi-scripts has been changed today to use the sony-laptop path which works but there are two problems.
Sonypi have to been blacklisted or removed otherwise brightness has one less mode (0) and two less (0 and 8) than the patched sony_acpi https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22/+bug/117327 for TX and maybe other Sony notebooks.
Without that, sonypi and sony-laptop have to be removed and only sony-laptop has to be loaded again.
Sony_acpi could be removed too if there is a solution for https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.22/+bug/117327 but it doesn't hurt since it isn't loaded in Gutsy atm.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

The only missing sony_acpi feature is https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.22/+bug/117331.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

This feature is accessible through /sys/devices/platform/sony-laptop/brightness_default so there is really no need for sony_acpi anymore.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

Ok, brightness changing works fine even without blacklisted sonpyi if this bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/136380 has been fixed.
So no kernel change is needed.

[Paolo Borelli (pborelli)]

I confirm that after the latest upgrade the sony-laptop module is loaded by deafult here too.

However, a bit surprisingly the screen came up with a low brightness by default. Setting the brightness manually in /sys works fine.

[unggnu (unggnu)]

@Paolo Borelli
This has something to do with brightness_default value. I have posted a possible fix for your problem @ https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/acpi-support/+bug/117331.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.